BELLINGHAM — The Massachusetts Department of Labor Relations has found enough cause to move forward with a hearing on a complaint filed by the School Committee alleging the teachers union violated state labor laws, reneging on an agreed-upon contract.

The complaint accuses the teachers union of reneging on an ostensibly finalized 3-year contract – worked out on Nov. 1 during a marathon bargaining session and then negotiated in the days that followed by the sides’ attorneys — and later demanding the School Committee add a new salary increase for nurses.

A hearing date has not been set. The union has 10 days to respond to the allegations.

Chairman Daniel Ranieri said the committee expects the department to order the union to ratify the contract.

"Further, it expects that the DLR will sanction union leadership for its illegal coercion and retaliation against the committee," he said.

After the Nov. 1 session, conducted through a state mediator, the committee’s attorney, Leo Peloquin of Norwood, penned a document laying out terms that the two negotiating teams had hashed out.

Peloquin exchanged the document with Laurie Houle, the union’s attorney, several times, working through various details of the contract, according to the complaint. At no point did the attorneys discuss the nurses’ salary increase that would later unravel the negotiations, the complaint shows.

On Nov. 15 of last year, Houle in an email told Peloquin, "We are good to go," adding that the union now needed to ratify the document, the complaint said.

Seven days later, according to the committee’s complaint, Bellingham Teachers Association President Ben Roy sent off an email indicating that the fractious contract talks — that up to that point had spanned more than year — had reached a conclusion

"We have agreed to the adequate deal I mentioned in the last update. There will be a ratification meeting in the near future," Roy said, according to the complaint.

Again, the complaint noted, there was no mention of the salary hike for nurses.

Then, the wheels fell off.

According to the complaint, Roy mentioned the nurses' salary increase on Nov. 26 and chalked up its absence from the contract as a mistaken omission. The next day, the School Committee told Roy that the increase had never been discussed, the complaint said.

Roy responded with another email saying most everyone on the union negotiating team believed the nurses increase was in the contract, the complaint said. According to Ranieri, Roy later accused the committee of removing the nurses' pay from the original document in an email to union membership.

"At no time did anybody from either side mention eliminating it. This is very shady. This is not meant to be a threat, but is this really worth losing this deal over? Would your side rather spend an extra $10,000 on nurses or on labor lawyers," Roy said, according to the complaint.

Page 2 of 2 - In early December, the union said it would not be ratifying the deal until the nurses’ salary increase was included. Later that month, it re-opened a labor complaint against the committee, filed last summer, that alleges regressive bargaining, one it had agreed to close after the Nov. 1 meeting. According to the union, in the early days of negotiations, the committee withdrew a favorable offer and replaced it with a lesser deal.

Committee members saw the union’s decision to re-open the dormant complaint against them as retaliation against the missing nurses’ pay.

The talks between both sides have since devolved into a he-said she-said quarrel.

Ranieri said the committee will ask the department to order the union to reimburse the district for attorneys’ fees "it has incurred as a result of the illegal retaliation."

"The committee calls on the BTA to stop its campaign of illegal retaliation against the committee and, ultimately, the school district," he said.

This week, the union addressed the committee’s complaint in a statement, saying "the truth will prevail."

"The BTA stands by its explanation that the disputed ‘nurses’ step 7’ was part of the tentative agreement to come out of the November 1, 2013 mediation session," the union said. "The Bellingham School Committee … did not include it in its document. Once carefully reviewed, the BTA noticed the missing step and tried to fix the problem, even offering to pay for it in the first year of the three-year contract."

The union ended by saying it would like the issues settled and "return to the bargaining table to end this prolonged disagreement." It added that the committee must first agree to address all of the issues on the table from the beginning.

"If the committee is not amenable to continuing to negotiate fairly, the BTA is content to let both trials conclude to determine where this process will go," the union said.